How to teach a dog to find things by scent

What “find it” actually means

In Proof this is a skill in its own right, because ten minutes of nose work tires a dog like an hour of fetch, without the adrenaline.

The stages

These steps are a draft pending review by a credentialed trainer. They describe standard positive-reinforcement marker training; the app carries the same notice on every session screen.

1. Stage 1 — Scatter feeding

   Goal: Dog hunts scattered treats on cue, nose down and happy

   1. Toss a handful of kibble into short grass or across a rug and say "find it".
   2. Let the dog work it out alone — pointing helps you, not the dog.

   If it goes wrong

   • Dog stares at you instead of searching? You have trained brilliant attention — throw the first few treats so the dog sees them land, then fade to unseen scatters.

2. Stage 2 — Hidden, not scattered

   Goal: Dog searches a room for treats it did not see placed

   1. Hide treats at nose height while the dog waits elsewhere: behind a chair leg, under a cushion edge.
   2. Release with "find it". Start obvious, get sneaky as the nose takes over from the eyes.

   If it goes wrong

   • Dog gives up after one sweep? Too hard too fast. Two easy finds for every hard one keeps the search worth funding.

How long does it take?

Most foundation skills reach their bar in two to four weeks of short daily sessions. Adolescence can temporarily un-stick anything, which is normal.

Proof does not put a timeline on an individual skill, and neither should anything else — the honest answer depends on the dog in front of you, how often you practise, and where you practise. What it does instead is measure: every session records how many reps landed, so progress is a number rather than a feeling.

Proving it in 3 different places

A behaviour that only works in the kitchen is situational, not trained. Find it counts as proven in Proof once it clears the bar above at the top stage in 3 genuinely different contexts:

• Indoors — the quiet room where everything works
• Garden — outdoors, but home turf
• Street — pavements, traffic, passing people
• Park — other dogs, long grass, real distraction
• Somewhere new — a place the dog has never worked before

Proof also expires. Leave a proven skill for two months without asking for it and it returns to the daily plan as a refresher, because that is what actually happens to trained behaviour.